Abstract

The STandards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA) were published in five journals in 2001
and 2002. These guidelines, in the form of a checklist and explanations for use by authors and journal editors, were designed
to improve reporting of acupuncture trials, particularly the interventions, thereby facilitating their interpretation and
replication. Subsequent reviews of the application and impact of STRICTA have highlighted the value of STRICTA as well as
scope for improvements and revision.

To manage the revision process a collaboration between the STRICTA Group, the CONSORT Group and the Chinese Cochrane Centre
was developed in 2008. An expert panel with 47 participants was convened that provided electronic feedback on a revised draft
of the checklist. At a subsequent face-to-face meeting in Freiburg, a group of 21 participants further revised the STRICTA
checklist and planned dissemination.

The new STRICTA checklist, which is an official extension of CONSORT, includes 6 items and 17 subitems. These set out reporting
guidelines for the acupuncture rationale, the details of needling, the treatment regimen, other components of treatment, the
practitioner background and the control or comparator interventions. In addition, and as part of this revision process, the
explanations for each item have been elaborated, and examples of good reporting for each item are provided. In addition, the
word ‘controlled’ in STRICTA is replaced by ‘clinical’, to indicate that STRICTA is applicable to a broad range of clinical
evaluation designs, including uncontrolled outcome studies and case reports. It is intended that the revised STRICTA checklist,
in conjunction with both the main CONSORT statement and extension for non-pharmacological treatment, will raise the quality
of reporting of clinical trials of acupuncture.

Footnotes

Members of the STRICTA Revision and Steering Groups The Steering Group comprised DA and DM (CONSORT), HM and RH (STRICTA) and YL and TW (Chinese Cochrane Centre). The STRICTA
Revision Group, who participated in the consensus-building workshop in Freiburg, comprised the six members of the Steering
Group and Stephen Birch, Isabelle Boutron, Mark Bovey, Yutong Fei, Joel Gagnier, Sally Hopewell, Val Hopwood, Susanne Jena,
Klaus Linde, Jianping Liu, Kien Trinh, Emma Veitch, AW and Hitoshi Yamashita.

Funding The workshop in Freiburg was supported by the White Rose Health Innovation Partnership, Enterprise and Innovation Office,
Charles Thackrah Building, 101 Clarendon Road, Leeds LS2 9LJ, Leeds, UK. HM is supported by a Career Scientist Award from
the UK National Institute for Health Research. DGA is supported by Cancer Research UK. DM is supported by a University of
Ottawa Research Chair.

Competing interests AW is employed by the British Medical Acupuncture Society as Editor of Acupuncture in Medicine.

In order to encourage dissemination of the STRICTA criteria, this article is freely accessible on aim.bmj.com and will also
be published in the Australian Journal of Chinese Medicine, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Journal of Evidence Based Medicine,
Medical Acupuncture, and Public Library of Science. The authors jointly hold the copyright of this article. For details on further use, see the CONSORT website (http://www.consort-statement.org/consort-statement/)

Clinical effectiveness and safety of acupuncture in the treatment of irradiation-induced xerostomia in patients with head
and neck cancer: a systematic review Acupuncture in Medicine2010;0:2010 aim.2010.002733v3-acupmed2733